Good Afternoon, Mr. Chairman:  Thank you for allowing me to appear before you today to discuss the New Mexico Vet Centers’ efforts to improve rural access and outreach, as well as transition from service member to Veteran. 

VA’s Vet Centers are a different kind of environment—a caring, non-clinical setting—in which Veterans can receive care.  Vet Centers serve combat Veterans and their families by providing quality readjustment counseling.  Vet Center care consists of a continuum of social and psychological services including community outreach to special populations and referrals to services with community agencies.  VA maintains a trained and qualified cadre of professional mental health professionals and other licensed counselors to provide professional readjustment counseling for combat-related PTSD and co-morbid conditions such as depression and substance use disorders.  Nationally, over 60 percent of Vet Center direct readjustment counseling staff are qualified mental health professionals (licensed psychologists, social workers and psychiatric nurses).  When necessary for the treatment of more complex mental health conditions, Vet Centers refer Veterans to VA medical facilities for mental health services, and promote active partnerships with their VA mental health counterparts to better serve Veterans.

There are four Vet Centers located in New Mexico:  Farmington, Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Las Cruces.  The Santa Fe and Las Cruces Vet Centers are each home to a Mobile Vet Center.  A core value of the Vet Centers is to promote access to care by helping Veterans and families overcome barriers that impede the receipt of needed services.  To extend the geographical reach of Vet Center services, VA has implemented initiatives to ensure that new Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) combat Veterans can access its care.  VA’s Vet Centers in New Mexico employ 15 counselors, 4 office managers, 2 Mobile Vet Center drivers, and 1 Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) Outreach Technician.  Twelve of the clinicians are Licensed Clinical Social Workers, 8 are bilingual, and 13 are Veterans.

VA has extensive plans to provide outreach services to rural communities in New Mexico.  In southern New Mexico, the Las Cruces Vet Center provides weekly outreach and clinical services to Veterans in the Silver City area (Grant County) and the Truth or Consequences community (Sierra County).  They also provide outreach to communities such as Roswell, Artesia, Alamogordo, Lordsburg and Deming, NM.  The two Mobile Vet Centers in New Mexico have been providing outreach and counseling services in the rural communities of New Mexico and several American Indian Pueblos.  A third Mobile Vet Center, housed in Chinle, Arizona on a Navajo Reservation, also provides outreach coverage to the northwest corner of New Mexico.  Mobile Vet Center Outreach events have been staged in 22 different New Mexico communities.  Most of these efforts have coincided with events such as the Moving Wall, Veterans Day Parade, Run for the Wall, State and local Fairs and Yellow Ribbon gatherings.  Other events included a day at the Zoo for OEF/OIF Veterans in El Paso, Beyond the Yellow Ribbon Event for women Veterans, the 3rd Annual Southern Arizona gathering of American Indian Veterans, and the 11th Annual Native American Symposium in Albuquerque.  The Mobile Vet Centers have been well utilized for over 79 different events in the past year alone.  Outreach to other special populations includes visits to some communities that have primarily Hispanic Veterans, homeless Veteran Stand Downs in Albuquerque, events at Veterans Service Organization posts, and other Veteran-oriented events.

The Santa Fe Vet Center has a GWOT Outreach Technician who provides outreach to National Guard and Reserve units throughout the state as well as at active duty military sites.  Several local units were deployed to combat last year and are scheduled to return home in June 2010.  The GWOT Outreach Technician is working with the New Mexico National Guard State Family Program Director and staff to provide outreach and counseling services to all units upon their return.  The GWOT Outreach Technician from Santa Fe attended 54 different welcome home events at National Guard and Reserve units throughout the state, Veterans Club gatherings at Universities, events sponsored by community hospitals for Veterans, and two Pow Wows for Native American Veterans sponsored by local Tribes.  He also has been the guest on two radio programs and attended a variety of other community meetings to speak about Veteran’s issues and services. 

The New Mexico Vet Centers have provided outreach and services at all Post-Deployment Health Reassessments (PDHRA) and Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program events held by National Guard and Reserve units in New Mexico.  VA’s New Mexico Vet Centers also provided counseling services to 303 recently returned combat Veterans in fiscal year (FY) 2009 and 155 in the first 5 months of FY 2010.

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you.  I am now prepared to answer your questions.